


D'Arcy Cheeswright: Completely Flat

by godsdaisiechain (preux)



Series: Completely Flat [1]
Category: Jeeves & Wooster, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: Angst, Drag, Drones Club, F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mistaken Identity, Reunions, Revelations, Unrequited Love, disguises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-31
Updated: 2013-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-13 12:05:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/824125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preux/pseuds/godsdaisiechain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the queer_fest prompt: Stilton Cheesewright, meeting Daphne Delores Morehead (Jeeves) was a revelation, he just wished he could figure out why she looked so familiar.</p><p>Summary: D’Arcy ponders the situation after meeting the real Daphne Dolores Morehead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	D'Arcy Cheeswright: Completely Flat

**Author's Note:**

> Playing with that trope where Jeeves is desperately in love with Bertie and Bertie doesn't realize it...

D’Arcy Cheesewright drained a befuddled brandy.  As he did so, his beefy brain pondered the universe of all women, the universe of Brinkley Court, and the universe of Daphne Dolores Moreheads.  The world, it seemed, teemed with Moreheads. Or at least two of them. He was just returning from New York where he had met Daphne Dolores Morehead.  Or a Daphne Dolores Morehead, as there appeared to be a plethora, or at least a pair, or doublet, no, duo, of them. It bore thinking about, so much thinking that he had not said ‘Ho!’ for some days.

The D. D. Morehead of New York was nothing like the woman he had met at Brinkley Court. In fact, she was almost the opposite.  Inviting, eager to spend time with him, oozing and brimming and overflowing and otherwise exuding adoration for the splendor of his physical specimenity, if that was a word.  He had overheard Percy Gorringe insulting Bertie Wooster, saying that (unlike D’Arcy), Bertie had no possible attraction for a girl like Florence Craye, being at once mentally and physically negligible.  Whereas D’Arcy was merely, according to Gorringe, m. negligible, but possessed of an absolutely strapping corpus rippling with robust musculature and exuding masculinity. ‘A fine physical specimen,’ Gorringe had called D’Arcy.  It had rankled.  And it rankled all the more because he perceived it to be true, that few would ever start and boggle with admiration for his cunning fiend’s brain the same way that Bertie Wooster had.  Just as Percy knew that Florence would view the Wooster mind (and the Cheesewright mind, for that matter) as a faulty thing in need of improvements.

Not that the Daphne of New York was not a fully corking and ripping and otherwise splendid physical s. in her own right. The beazel had a figure rippling with curves like a scenic railway and her nose uptilted beautifully, qualities that were nicely set off by cascades of sweet-smelling hair the color of ripened wheat and eyes of cornflower blue. She remembered D’Arcy from when he had rowed at Oxford and spontaneously described the Cheesewright head as majestic. In fact, when he diffidently suggested that certain others had likened the majestic visage to one of the mightier of the squashes, she had gasped in the manner of a woman confronted with a garter snake and denied that there was any possible resemblance between it and a pumpkin or any other humble vegetable. Caesar, yes. Pumpkins, no.

La Morehead, Stilton realized, was utterly and completely the feline nightwear, the middle leg joints of the honey-producing buzzing bumbler, and all things great, beautiful, wise, bright, wonderful, and small into the bargain. Her voice was mellow and smooth, her chat like a limpid stream of delicious devotion and her being nothing at all like the strapping, robust apparition at Brinkley Court. She clung to his arm and issued forth burbles of intellectual matter, eyes shining with delight and admiration, and even, if he could credit it, lust (although done in a perfectly ladylike and tasteful way). In fact, Daphne was perfect, ideal material for the wife of a young Parliamentarian.

She left Stilton completely flat.

Well, not completely, obviously.  She was a rather pulchritudinous thing and he was a virile rower of the first water.  There had been the obligatory stir of splendid physical s. to s. p. s. but after that, nothing. Less than nothing if he faced cold hard facts like a man capable of becoming a policeman to address the social ills of capitalism, and he was such a man.

Of course, D’Arcy had had to pretend that he returned her obvious affections.  It would have been uncivil otherwise.  Likely, he would have to marry her, especially after he had gone on and on about her at the Drones. But he did not have to give up on his quest to find the woman he had met at Brinkley Court.  Besides, all he would have to do to get rid of the unwanted Morehead was to throw her in the way of a man who adored her.  Beazels seemed to gravitate to that sort of thing in the manner of planets g-ing to asteroids or moons or whatever thingummy.  It worked for Bertie Wooster, after all.

The next thing he had to do was find the woman he had met. D’Arcy became stuck at this point.

Then something shifted in the Cheesewright brain. Like most of his fellow inmates at Malvern on the Sea, then Eton, and then Oxford (of whom there were a surprising number), D’Arcy Cheesewright was not a man to lightly throw in the towel and admit defeat. He stirred the b. brain to new heights of cogitation.  Then, back in the privacy of his cabin, he executed a series of Swedish exercises of increasing degrees of difficulty. As he divested the corpus of the accumulated sweat of the exercises, D’Arcy played back his thoughts.  And he heard a name repeated. Bertie Wooster. Bertie Wooster. Bertie Wooster.

Bertie Wooster.

D’Arcy’s brain, and body, froze. He had known Bertie from the time they were boys.  They had been very good friends, and he now considered Bertie his chief pal. And, as he played the scenes back in his mind, D’Arcy realized something. Bertie had seemed terribly comfortable with this Daphne Dolores Morehead.  Had almost seemed to know her as well as he knew…not one of his pals, perhaps, but that manservant of his, the one everyone always said was so clever.  Peeves? Weaves?  No, Jeeves.  That was it.  Jeeves. The manservant everyone tried to steal away, until they realized how clever he really was.  D’Arcy would definitely never want a servant that clever in his household.  He would never have a moment’s peace.

A few more gears clicked into place between the Cheesewright ears.  Jeeves.  D’Arcy had stood beside Jeeves in the past.  The man had taken his coat and hat several times.  And as he pondered this, D’Arcy felt the gears shift and whir and then melt.

Jeeves.

He was about the right size and shape.  And, now that he considered it, Bertie had seemed almost amused.  Yes, amused.  As if he was having one over, not on D’Arcy, but on Daphne.

Who was Jeeves. D’Arcy left aside the question about why Jeeves had been dressed up as a woman.  He was a servant and had to do as he was told, after all.  A more important problem had gripped the Cheesewright mind. His body went cold under the layer of soapy water.

He was attracted to Jeeves.  How shocking.  He’d never considered himself that sort of bean or egg or crumpet.

D’Arcy had witnessed boys experimenting when he had been at school.  He had never done much of that himself, except once, with Bertie.  Who had been a bit of a dear, if he allowed himself to remember it. 

D’Arcy had liked Bertie, who had been cheerfully affectionate and patient with his awkwardness.  There had been a certain look, too, a look of fond, almost amused affection.

The same look Bertie had given Daphne Dolores Morehead when he suggested that his Aunt would not mind if D’Arcy showed her the grounds. 

Things aligned themselves in D’Arcy’s mind. 

He was attracted to Jeeves, who was the object of Wooster’s affectionate admiration, at the least.

Whatever was he going to do?

 

D’Arcy Cheesewright set aside his brandy glass and turned to find Bertie himself, engaging in a game of darts.  His aim was flawless as the darts thacked into the board.

“What ho, Wooster.”

Bertie started.  “Ah, Stilton!  Pip pip, what?”

“Pip pip, indeed, Wooster,” said D’Arcy.

“Er, Stilton,” said Bertie uneasily.  “I wonder how your trip to New York transpired, and, ah, whatnot.” D’Arcy described the genuine D.D. Morehead and Bertie sighed appreciatively. “Left you cold, then, what?” D’Arcy shrugged.

“Have you, er, ah whatsit?” said Bertie, draining an uncomfortable brandy.

D’Arcy snorted and said, “Ho!” in a subdued sort of voice.

“Let’s ankle back to the flat,” said Bertie, taking his arm.  The men wandered home companionably.  They were nearing Bertie’s flat, when Bertie paused and drew D’Arcy aside.  In the alleyway was Jeeves, patting a young woman appreciatively on the bottom while he nibbled her neck.  D’Arcy nearly collapsed in horror.  “Rather unsettling, what?” said Bertie conversationally. “He’s an awful womanizer.  I sacked him for it once—he gave out that it was because of my banjolele—but he begged to come back and, well, dash it, that brain.”

D’Arcy squeezed Bertie’s arm. “Let’s go back to my flat.  I haven’t a valet this week.” Bertie’s eyes darkened. “I miss you.”  They turned and oozed off, and neither of them noticed the tears that filled Jeeves’s eyes at the sight of his young master holding the arm of another man in that familiar way.


End file.
